Few teams have suffered quite as much at the hands of an incomplete historical record as the 1939 St. Louis Stars. They were a pretty good team—the second half champions of the Negro American League, in fact, losing the pennant in a five-game series to the first-half champion Monarchs. But scouring the newspapers at the time reveals a paltry 20-23-2 record for the Stars in the Negro American League regular season (along with three losses to NNL teams). Clearly a large number of games were not reported, at least in the newspapers that have been found so far, and a lot remains to be uncovered.

Moreover, this edition of the St. Louis Stars had a somewhat confusing history, one that’s largely concealed when you just look at the standings. They actually bear no organizational connection to the original St. Louis Stars, which folded when the original NNL folded in 1931. Neither are they connected to the second St. Louis Stars club, which was founded by Henry L. Moore in 1936 and joined the Negro American League as a charter member in 1937. That team dissolved after the 1937 season.

This is actually the third distinct version of the St. Louis Stars. But it took them a few years to get to St. Louis. They were founded in the mid-1930s in Mounds, Illinois, by a numbers operator, real estate investor, and night club owner named Allen Johnson. As the Mounds Blues they built up a reputation as a strong independent outfit, managed by the veteran pitcher George Mitchell. In 1938 Johnson took over the Negro American League’s franchise in Indianapolis, and the Mounds Blues played that season as the Indianapolis ABCs. The next season they moved to St. Louis to assume the mantle of another traditional blackball power, the St. Louis Stars.

In 1940 and 1941 they split their home games between St. Louis and New Orleans. Then Johnson and Mitchell bought into the NNL’s New York Black Yankees and merged the two teams, bringing half the Stars’ roster with them to New York for the 1942 season. A year later they unmerged the two teams, placing a new NNL entry in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as the Harrisburg-St. Louis Stars (though the team apparently had no connection with St. Louis). This team dropped out of the NNL midway through the 1943 season. They barnstormed the rest of that season, then spent a couple more years as an associate member of the NAL.

In addition to a tangled history and poor reportage, the ’39 St. Louis Stars have suffered from a lack of recognizable stars. Their best-known player was probably outfielder-catcher Quincy Trouppe, who didn’t spend the whole season with St. Louis. Apart from Trouppe, you’ve got a bevy of pretty good players, none of whom really stand out—the double play combination of Marshall Riddle and Alfred “Buddy” Armour; a pair of solid pitchers, Frank “Chip” McAllister and Walter “Lefty” Calhoun; outfielders Dan Wilson and Leslie “Chin” Green; and ex-Monarch first baseman Ed Mayweather.

The relative anonymity of the ’39 St. Louis Stars has even caused one of the few evidences of their existence to be misidentified as a totally different team—one with a bankable star. The photo below has sometimes been identified as the 1922 St. Louis Stars featuring Cool Papa Bell, apparently the very young-looking guy in street clothes sitting in the front. (On the back of the copy I own, someone has even penciled “James Bell, CF.”)

Needless to say, that’s not Bell, and those aren’t the 1922 St. Louis Stars. They are the 1939 Stars, and here are my best efforts at identifying them:

Standing, L to R:
1) Bob Smith
2) Walter “Lefty” Calhoun
3) Jimmy Ford
4)
5) Frank “Chip” McAllister
6) Dan Wilson
7) Bobby Robinson (?)
8) Bill Bradford

Seated, L to R:
1) Marshall Riddle
2)Theolic “Fireball” Smith
3) Ed Mayweather
4) Leslie “Chin” Green
5) Alfred “Buddy” Armour
6) Robert Dean
7)

Seated in front:
Mascot / ball boy

Two of these players (Bob Smith and Marshall Riddle) are identified from a caption to a different print of the photo published in Robert D. Retort’s book, Pictorial Negro League Legends Album. His IDs for other players otherwise match my own.

Here are comparisons for each of my IDs to other known photographs of the players.

  

  

 

Originally I had the manager, George Mitchell, as the first man standing on the left, but that player is too short. Mitchell, listed at 6 foot 3, was as tall as Chip McAllister, who is towering over everyone in the middle of the back row. Robert Retort has that player ID’d as the catcher Bob Smith. I’ve never seen a photo of Smith, so for now I will go with Retort.

I thought at first that the fourth player standing from the left was Theolic Smith, but as Caleb Hardwick pointed out in the comments, that does not quite work. It’s evident to me now that Smith is the second seated player from the right, leaving the other player unidentified.

The second player from the right in the front row once looked to me a lot like Quincy Trouppe, who did play part of the 1939 season with the Stars. But comparison with a photo of the 1937 Mounds Blues makes it quite clear that this is Dean.

If these are all correct, this would leave two players unidentified, both in the front row: the second from the left, and the last on the right. The most likely candidates would include catcher Raymond Taylor and infielder John Lyles. It’s possible the second man on the left is Lyles, though I am doubtful. Unfortunately I don’t have a confirmed image of Taylor to compare. If anybody can help out, let me know.